


Day Ten: Sleep Paralysis/Nightmare

by Euphorion



Series: Writober [10]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Car Accidents, Ghosts, M/M, implied but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 04:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8273050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion
Summary: There was a boy standing by the window. He almost didn’t see him at first, or. No, that wasn’t quite right. He’d seen him immediately. It had just taken him until his eyes were halfway down the next wall for him to recognize him as out of place.
  There was a boy standing by the window. In his bedroom.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place directly after [day 9](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8262923) but you could just as easily read it right after [day 2](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8194627) if you want

Kagami was walking down the street, only. It was odd, not a street he knew, and everyone seemed too tall, most of them taller than him. He found himself dodging people’s shoulders in a way he’d never had to before, his own shoulders too slim, his body too slight. He looked down at his strange, too-pale hands, his delicate fingers, panic rising in his throat.

Shoving past a businessman and a mother and her child, he fought free of the crowded street. Someone shouted something, but he paid them no mind—in the open air he could breathe more freely. He settled his shoulders and started to take a long breath, hoping to calm down a little and get a better bearing on his surroundings. He felt—odd, like his head was full of pillows, all his blood pounding behind his eyes.

A car horn blared. The mother with her child screamed. Kagami turned, and saw nothing but onrushing light.

He sat up with a gasp, eyes snapping open to the darkness of his bedroom. Breathing hard, he ran his hands over his face—his own hands, broad-palmed and familiar, his own face. “God,” he muttered to himself, “what the hell.”

He stretched his back, letting his eyes wander lazily over his dim bedroom. It had been such a weird nightmare. There had been nothing chasing him, nothing he was moving towards, just. This sense that he wasn’t _him_ , and then the crash.

There was a boy standing by the window. He almost didn’t see him at first, or. No, that wasn’t quite right. He’d seen him immediately. It had just taken him until his eyes were halfway down the next wall for him to recognize him as out of place.

There was a boy standing by the window. In his bedroom.

He grabbed at his sheets in shock. “What the hell—how—” He stopped himself, squinted. “You’re the kid from the mall!”

The boy—Kuroko Tetsuya, he’d said, both the name and the way he said it unforgotten and unforgettable, pressed it into Kagami’s palm with his strange, cold handshake—smiled at him, very, very slightly. The moonlight caught in one of his eyes, lighting it up the blue of primordial ice. Kagami shivered. 

“You remember me,” Kuroko said, and the wind sighed.

Kagami drew his knees up to his chest slowly. His heart had not yet settled in his chest from his nightmare, but he wasn’t scared of this kid—not even freaked the way he probably normally should have been when finding a dude he just met watching him sleep. 

He’d throw him out in a minute. Maybe he was crazy. Maybe better to play along, find out why he was here. “Yeah,” he said, “you—you were there with Momoi-san and Aomine.”

Kuroko ran a hand through his hair, all wrist and pale, flicking fingers. “I was there with Aomine-kun,” he corrected, “and Momoi-san was there too.”

Something about the way he emphasized it made Kagami pause. “Aomine, is he your. You know.” He coughed. Somehow it seemed a little forward to ask a kid who had just snuck into his room in the middle of the night if he had a boyfriend. 

Kuroko inclined his chin in something that was almost, but not quite, a nod. “He was the only one who could see me,” he said, and his smile grew. It should have been sinister, there in the moonlight, and there was an edge to it that made Kagami a little nervous. But then something shifted, and Kuroko’s eyes softened, and suddenly his face was filled with a sweet, uncomplicated, breathtaking joy. “Until you, Kagami-kun.”

Kagami blinked, hard, shaking his head. Definitely crazy. Beautiful, but crazy. “What do you mean, the only one who can see you?”

Kuroko sobered, stepping forward. “I meant what I said,” he said. “Kagami-kun. Look out the window.”

Kagami frowned at him. “I can’t,” he pointed out, annoyed. “You’re in the way. What the hell are you doing here, anyway—”

“Look out the window,” Kuroko said again, firmly, stepping forward again so even his narrow shoulders entirely blocked the light of the moon. He took a breath—Kagami watched his chest rise, and fall, and fail to rise again. “Stop looking at me,” Kuroko said, still without drawing breath, his voice gentle again and a little bit sad, “and look out the window.”

“I can’t look out the damn window,” Kagami growled, “and I don’t know why I would need to anyway, when I know what I’ll see. The only thing out there is the tree that’s always out there, and the moon, and some stupid squirrel who doesn’t understand what night-time is for.”

“How do you know there’s a squirrel?” Kuroko asked, his head cocked.

“Because I can fucking see it,” Kagami snapped, and as soon as it was out of his mouth he found that he could, clear as—well, not as day, but clear as well-moonlit-night, anyway: the tree, the last of its leaves shifting and rattling in the autumn wind; the moonlight, painting a silver rectangle on his floor; the squirrel, sitting crouched on the thickest of the tree’s branches, his tiny nose up as if testing the air.

He could also, impossibly, still see Kuroko, solid as anything, smiling down at him. The two images were simultaneous, layered without obscuring each other at all, both there, in front of him, both equally real and unreal. 

“What’s—what’s happening?” Kagami whispered. “Is this—are you a dream?”

It was a comforting thought, that this could be a continuation of the strangeness he’d seen earlier. That he might wake up to birdsong and morning and a world he understood. 

Kuroko sat down on the edge of his bed. It didn’t sink beneath his weight. “Do you want me to be a dream?” he asked, his face turned away. He was weirdly, preternaturally still, and the world seemed to still with him.

Kagami licked his lips, knowing he should say yes. “No.”

Kuroko looked at him, the smallest shade of his joyful smile tucked into the corner of his mouth. “Then I’m not a dream,” he said. 

Kagami scratched his head. “Okay,” he started, “but—”

“As far as I can tell,” Kuroko said, “I’m a ghost.” 

He was moving, now, fidgeting, playing with something at his wrist. A wristband, just like the ones in Kagami’s gym bag that he wore every day on the court. Without thinking, he reached out and plucked at it. It felt like tugging on cool candle flame, brushing and flickering free of his fingers. “You play basketball,” he offered, then winced. “Played, I guess. Sorry.”

Kuroko nodded. “Played,” he confirmed. “I was never very good. But I always used to feel certain that if I could just find someone who could really see me—for who I was, for what I was capable of—I could show them something amazing.”

“You’re showing me something pretty amazing,” Kagami said, and then felt his face heat when Kuroko looked at him. What the hell was he even blushing about, it was true. “Not every day you meet a ghost, I mean.”

Kuroko watched him for another moment, and then said, “Not exactly what I had in mind when I was alive, though.”

Kagami snorted in amusement. “No,” he said. “It wouldn’t be. Still, despite everything, maybe it’s not too late. Maybe that’s why you’re here, or whatever. Still walking the mortal plane. You’ve got another chance.” He yawned. “After all, I can see you. And Aomine.”

“Yes,” said Kuroko seriously, “you and Aomine-kun can see me.” He paused. “And a very cute cat.”

“A cat?” Kagami asked, puzzled.

Kuroko nodded. “Cats can see ghosts, you see.” He stood up with a sigh. “Aomine-kun will miss me,” he said, his voice a soft, strange mix of fondness and regret. “It was nice to meet you, Kagami-kun.”

“It, uh. Good to meet you,” Kagami stuttered. 

Kuroko raised a hand in farewell. “You’ll see me again,” he said, answering the question Kagami had felt too weird to ask, and then he walked through Kagami’s wall and was gone.

Kagami sank down into his sheets. “What,” he said to his ceiling, “the _hell_.”


End file.
